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DNA from 6000-year-old chewing gum reveals how an ancient woman lived

By Clare Wilson

She dined on duck, eels and hazel nuts, before settling down to a spot of tool-making, using birch bark pitch as a glue for sticking stone blades to wooden handles. The dark-haired, dark-skinned woman chewed the pitch for a while to make it more pliable, then for some reason spat out a wad without using it.

Six thousand years later archaeologists have extracted DNA from the discarded lump to shed light on the woman’s diet, appearance, and ancestry. They have named her Lola, as it was found on the island of Lolland, part of modern-day Denmark. …